Fresh Year, Fresh Content – January 2013 Highlights

FOUNDERS’ DAY DELIVERED

To celebrate UC San Diego’s 52nd year, the campus invited six dynamic faculty members to share their inspirations for research and education with the audience at the Founders’ Symposium, part of the Founders’ Day celebration held in November.

If you couldn’t get to campus for the festive occasion, don’t worry because UCSD-TV is presenting the talks on TV and online this month.

Watch UC San Diego Founders’ Symposium.

SAN DIEGO OPERA SEASON PREMIERE!

UCSD-TV is thrilled to bring you another season of programming from San Diego Opera, which kicks off its 2013 season in January with Donizetti’s sparkling comedy “Daughter of the Regiment,” updated to the WWII era.

Get the history of the work from San Diego Opera’s Nick Reveles on “OperaTalk!,” go inside the performers’ creative process with “Stars in the Salon,” and venture behind the curtains with “Opera Spotlight” before the debut performance on January 26.

You can also catch up with previous San Diego Opera seasons at our opera website!

COASTAL COLLISION GOES OUT WITH A BANG

We finish off “The Atlantic Meets the Pacific” series this month with even more fascinating conversations with cutting-edge thinkers and researchers. Topics range from the future of wireless medicine to learning to play the guitar later in life. Watch them all — and videos from the 2011 event — at “The Atlantic Meets the Pacific” series page.

Also new in January:

Health & Medicine

Aging and Driving: A Complex Combination

Infant Care — Health Matters

Science

Ocean Acidification: Can Corals Cope?

Public Affairs

Rachel Carson’s Legacy: Finding the Wisdom and Insight for Global Environmental Citizenship

Humanities

The Evolution of Religion, Society & Consciousness with Ursula Kin — Burke Lecture

Arts & Music

Gabriel Kahane: Come On All You Ghosts — La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2012

Let’s Talk Murder in the Cathedral

The 1170 murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II shook Christian Europe to its foundation, and set off reverberations still felt today. The nefarious deed also inspired two 20th Century works of art, the verse play by T.S. Eliot and Ildebrando Pizzetti’s opera, “Murder in the Cathedral.”

San Diego Opera is staging its production of Pizzetti’s work this Spring, so UCSD-TV and San Diego Opera’s Nick Reveles want to make sure you know what it’s all about. In this edition of “San Diego OperaTalk,” Reveles offers a guided tour of “Murder in the Cathedral,” including its basis in Eliot’s play, the development of musical themes, and Pizzetti’s melding of words and music for maximum dramatic effect.

Watch “San Diego OperaTalk!: Murder in the Cathedral” tonight (12/6) at 10pm on UCSD-TV, or online now. And make sure to tune in to UCSD-TV in January when we’re back with new episodes of “Opera Spotlight” and “Stars in the Salon,” which take you behind the scenes of San Diego Opera‘s 2013 season!

Daughter of the Regiment Gets the OperaTalk! Treatment

Though war doesn’t immediately come to mind as fertile ground for levity, there have been many stage and film comedies with a military setting: Mr. Roberts, Operation Petticoat, Dr. Strangelove, MASH, and Stripes, to name but a few.  This is definitely not the case in opera, where war is usually presented as a grim backdrop to drama and hilarity does not ensue.

Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment (La Fille du Régiment) is that rare and lively exception to this rule, a musical soufflé about a rambunctious tomboy who is adopted by a group of soldiers.  Set in the waning days of World War II in San Diego Opera’s production, it has everything you want in a comic opera – farcical plot, star-crossed young lovers, larger-than-life characters, scheming relatives, rousing numbers for the chorus, a plethora of vocal gymnastics (including the famous nine high Cs for the tenor) and, of course, a happy if improbable ending.

In this new edition of San Diego OperaTalk!, premiering tonight (Oct. 23) at 8pm (and online now), Nick Reveles explains it all to you in his inimitable style, including the opera’s origins and the historic role of women in the military.  Who knew war could be so much fun?

Watch Daughter of the Regiment – San Diego OperaTalk! with Nick Reveles tonight at 8pm or online now.

Summer(Fest) is Still in the Air – Starting Tonight!

Sure, the days are getting shorter, but the spirit of summer is still going strong on UCSD-TV with the premiere of three programs from La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest 2012 season.

The excitement kicks off tonight, October 5, at 8pm with Tan Dun’s Water Passion, a multicultural/multimedia oratorio, written by the acclaimed Chinese composer to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of J.S. Bach, whose “St. Matthew Passion” provided the initial inspiration for this work.  The music is a theatrical  mix of water bowls, drums, strings, Tibetan bells, chants, digital sounds, Chinese opera and Tuvan throat singing, with a dash of jazz and postmodernism, all filtered through Tan Dun’s adventurous sensibility.

Then tune in next Friday, October 12, at 8pm for Commissions & Premieres, part of SummerFest’s long tradition of showcasing new works. This year’s program includes stimulating pieces by American composers Gabriel Kahane, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Aaron Jay Kernis, and French composer Marc-Andre Dalbavie.

Finally, on October 19, there’s the Finale Concert, featuring 38 of the world’s best chamber and symphonic musicians as the SummerFest Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of celebrated conductor Kent Nagano.  The eclectic program includes Rossini’s beloved “Overture to The Barber of Seville,” Beethoven’s viruoso “Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major,” Maurer’s surprising “Sinfonia Concertante in A Minor for Four Violins and Strings,” and Mendelssohn’s  colorful “Symphony No. 4 in A Major.”

All programs repeat throughout the month and will be available online by their premiere date.

If you’re still not ready to let summer go, visit our SummerFest series page, where you can find video of performances and behind-the-scenes interviews going all the way back to 1999. That should keep you warm during the winter!

La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest 2012: Tan Dun’s Water Passion

Jam with the Students of UCSD's Jazz Camp

Every summer, a group of talented musicians, ranging in age from 14 to adult, gather together to jam … with jazz, that is.

The five-day Jazz Camp at UC San Diego offers intermediate to advance level musicians a diverse, one-of-a-kind journey into the world of jazz with group courses and workshops, plus private lessons, jam sessions, and concerts. The camp’s extraordinary faculty of leading jazz improvisers and educators help to sharpen students’ performance skills and enrich their experience of jazz as a broad spectrum of options for musical expression.

But the students aren’t the only ones to benefit. UCSD-TV cameras were at this year’s Jazz Camp Finale Concert to capture highlights of the wonderful student ensembles performing standards and new compositions. Watch it on your TV tonight, August 10, at 8pm or get a jump on your jazz fix and enjoy it online now. No jazz hands, please.